While the major banks have emerged to dominate the Australian mortgage market in the face of tight liquidity, in the United Kingdom big banking group HSBC is taking another approach aimed at increasing its mortgage lending footprint.
According to research house Datamonitor, HSBC is about to trial a mortgage matching service to provide impartial face-to-face advice for customers in its branches on the best mortgage deals available.
Datamonitor said the arrangement would benefit HSBC because it would receive a fee for providing the service, whether or not the customer eventually chose one of its mortgage products.
Datamonitor financial services analyst Roderick Logan said HSBC had traditionally shunned brokers, preferring to offer its mortgage products directly to consumers and that if the new move proved successful, the bank would be taking a larger share of the lending market from a broker channel.
“The bank can argue that it is still offering a service but at less cost than traditional mortgage brokers,” he said.
